Home Truths

I sometimes find people who think they're choosing the artistic high road do so to mask or divert others from seeing their essential conservatism. Almost (cough) like a straight man pretending to be gay to insinuate himself with women who would otherwise steer well clear of him.

Also, the word you're looking for is 'aficionado'. Wilde would be shocked; he never misspelt anything.

i get enough slice of dull life experience just existing, i'd rather expose myself to something else

1. I saw a poster for a zoo. I thought, in the 'Home Truths' view of the world, a zoo is rather uncomfortably exotic. I mean, why would anyone go to stand in front of a cage containing 'difference' when they could stand in front of a mirror instead? That's what Home Truths is, as Suzy points out: a mirror for the kind of people tuning in. Not a through-the-looking glass, just a looking glass.

2. The family is a sacred social unit for politicians of the right. The suburbs are where people go to have families. Many kids come of age at 20 grateful for the security their parents and the suburbs have given them, but determined to do something more with life, to go somewhere else. This we could call 'becoming'. To pick up the PiL reference, it's that sense of 'My entrance, my own creation...' This, above all, is what I believe in. The moment when someone decides to 'become'.

3. Arguably, the world's number one problem now is social conformity. We have more people alive than have ever been alive at one time, and yet there are not enough different ways of living. There is, increasingly, a global monoculture based on 'the family' and 'shopping'. Episodes like Sept. 11th merely worsened things by making all different ways of being look like 'evil'. Where do we attack conformity, and with what tools? We attack it at the level of the family. With Nietzsche, perhaps.

4. Whenever I see things being done differently, I'm filled with admiration. For instance, a band is setting up for a performance. But instead of drums, bass, guitars, there are all sorts of strange instruments, in strange places, some folk, some electronic, miked oddly, and a video screen. And when the performance starts, it's unclear whether this is vaudeville, or theatre, or dance, or rock, or art. Now, this kind of thing is easy to attack, just as it's easy for Ethan to jump in and call me an asshole. But I feel strongly that we have an obligation to attack, not deviants (who, no matter how unacceptable today, might be signposting the future) but conformists.

5. 'Breeders, normals, straights, squares, plastics...' These insulting terms sound so 60s because it's not since the 60s that the world of 'normals' was really on the defensive, really threatened by revolution in politics and art. Yet we need such attitudes all the more now we're surrounded by Gaps and Starbucks, when cultural diversity is really threatened, despite the numbers of people on the planet.

Those are my home truths, anyway.

Of course, i-D toys with the concept of Family. But look at their family special issue of a couple of years back and you find that the 'creatives' interviewed mean by 'family' the people they work with, gangs of likeminded fellow refuseniks, with the occasional biological family thrown in.

By the way, one of the saddest things I've read recently is what i-D publisher Terry Jones says in an interview on Nick Knight's website Showstudio about an anti- globalisation photoshoot killed in i-D after September 11th:

'We were very aware of what people were saying after September 11th, for us it would have been totally hypocritical if we also started saying that these events occurred as a result of global capitalism, or if our actions could be read as that. I thought the images and the styling of the shoot were fantastic, but thinking about it intelligently it seems we are all part of that business, we are all part of the promotion of capitalism. Whether it is StarBucks or Dior, Gucci or McDonald's, you can take a variety of companies that have entered the consciousness and each are ultimately part of the shopping experience. Essentially, we are part of the promotion of the shopping experience. So for us to attack it at that point seemed totally hypocritical.'

I know you can't bitch about your employer, Suzy, but how sad is that? Jones is essentially saying: 'After September 11th, anti-global messages are no different from terrorist messages. Consumer magazines must be on the side of consumer culture. There can be no self-criticism in the fashion industry.' So even i-D is just more canned music in the shopping mall.

I have a great respect for the 'ordinary' individual, the problem being that I don't believe that such people exist anymore. The suburbs have destroyed the (American) honorable working class, the inhabitants of small towns, etc.

by definition, how could everyone be "exceptional" at the same time??

also, a genius is only fun to study and talk about etc. not much fun to talk to, they tend to be assholes

i don't think peel's evolution is in any sense a surprise: his "anti-mainstream" attitudes carry the same seeds of the reaction as yours sometimes seems to -> but he's a "find a companion i can die with" kinda fellow, reduced to seeking the ever-changing pure sensations of the new in one familiar loved face, whereas you are notoriously mr serial best girlfriend, so you hunt on round the world for the realm of untainted non-conformism (which you will NOT btw find in japan, beguiling as it doubtless is for a year or so)

my objection to indie-world has always been that it has ALREADY signed its pact with the devil it defines itself as resisting: which is to say, it underestimates the devil and overestimates itself

ps anyone watching POPULAR will understand that as usual american teen tv is exploring these issues more intelligently (= dialectically heh) than peel ever did, or even PiL and you KNOW how much i heart lydon

Here is my home truth: the advertising/marketing industry is THE MOST CONSERVATIVE of ALL, no question. It is imperialist, sexist, racist patronising, totalitarian, and utterly mediocre, colonising anything 'new' - and if you give an ad exec one inch, they'll take the mile eventually. In fact, anyone in ANY line of work who mentions their brand more than once in the first ten minutes of interaction must be taken away and shot in the spirit of revolutionary insurrection. Or at the very least this is a reliable guide for spotting assholes who aren't geniuses.

The current climate in consumer magazines, where advertisers claim to be tightening their belts, is detrimental to freedom of expression because the magazines in question are tripping over themselves to win favour with the stealth conservatives who make up the industry (look, I don't care how cool the toys are that you buy with your £50k a year are, if you use your economic power to prevent someone from disagreeing with you in public, you are on the same primrose path as Pinochet).

A few years ago I suggested a piece where advertisers would be called into question for appropriating the ideas of the creative types (eg. Gillian Wearing) regularly featured in the magazine, which never ran shy of profiling, for example, the McLibel trial people or grassroots anti-government protestors. But when faced with a criticism of the advertisers buying space in the magazine, my editor said no to such a piece because she was scared the advertisers would pull their spending if criticised (it was okay to criticise McDonalds because they didn't buy space, and the government because we do ostensibly live in a democracy in Britain). There was a similar problem with the criticism of 'foundations' run by fashion companies to give artists money for projects, eg. the Prada Foundation. As a friend of mine, a very prominent artist, said, 'Oh, a *foundation*. If it makes them feel any more intelligent, fine. But it has TAX DODGE written all over it.' These companies want to be seen as having a link with the cutting edge of the culture, to elevate themselves above mere 'shopping', but quickly display their true colours if challenged with the sort of discourse found at the cutting edge, where people argue about intent, content motivation and appropriation.

I've met virtually no-one who has achieved *nothing*. Of course stuff like building a boat, renovating a house, running a marathon, learning a couple of languages, coming out as gay at 30, working for charity, and juggling work and family through serious illness, probably rates as *nothing* vs the ability to flaunt a surface knowledge of two or three philosophers. (These examples btw were taken from my immediate family and folks at work).

**We live in a world in which the dogma is 'we're all equal, we're all as valuable as each other'. But that doesn't mean we're all the same. I, and most people I know, are people who were ostracised at school as 'freaks'. And school was the last contact we had with 'normal' people. We gravitated to people like ourselves -- by and large self-employed, artistic, creative people**

What Gareth said. If you bothered to find out, instead of holing-up with fellow pseuds 24-7, you'd see what people had to offer, and value what they know, respect the way they live. Problem is, they might just spot that you're a ridiculous, pompous bigot.

Equality: we are supposed to enjoy equal protection under the law regardless of sex, income, beliefs or race. Talent of an exceptional type can crop up anywhere.

For someone so interested in seeing the world and dinding 'interesting' folks, how can you have so little faith in people? How fucking boring.

If I was Joe Orton I would probably be fucking them, though.

But if Momus is defining this as bettering oneself, I agree absolutely, but you are talking to someone who dropped out of university in the second year to work in a factory. So, maybe I am not the best example.

Do we live in a system of mediocrity? Yes. YES. YES.

Are the normal people (who I count myself as part of) responsible for the mediocrity? No.

It is the artists responsiblity for this, the artists and cultural critics, who, as there job, should be responsible for this.

But then it's a tricky question, is there nothing more subversive than normality, nothing more violent and interesting than the psychosis of the american dream?

if the artist or culturalists places himself in the exceptional rather than normal mind set, which is fine, he will have to expect a cult sized audience of people who, as he does, think that they are successful but that way of thinking is hardly successful with the mainstream. You can still educate to some extent but it has to be subtle....

if he were to write a subversive and educating pizza hut jingle I would honestly think that he was exceptional.

but the thing is that he's stuck in the artist ghetto, by his market audience, the only way he can escape if he has some message of intent before entering the mainstream. If he had a pop hit, he would lose his bread'n'butter (his fanbase....who want him to be exclusive/elusive) but me thinks he wants to have the big pop hit and that is the interest aspect of Momus. One foot in cultdom and the other in mainstream superstardom, back and forth. Until he goes fuck it and goes for it, then he really can't complain. His cultdom has provided him probably the income of a city investment wanker or a member of Westlife, he has a couple of pads and meets interesting people...

It's possible to overrate the importance of how people earn their living: some (many) people lead outwardly 'normal' lives while being gloriously strange.

Similarly, Suzy's 'cannon fodder' statements overrate the importance to having a full / rich / strange life of consuming the stuff she considers good.

Both of you seem to be saying "if you're going to be strange you'd better do it like us".

*Something ineffably male too; the kind of lofty contempt tossed around for 'breeders' and hyperbole re artistic 'difference' neglects that the feminist (if not female) take on Momus' account might bring to light whole sets of social and artistic/cultural relationships, contradictions and possibilities otherwise steamrollered over here. Of course the 'life of the mind' (good god) is possible in conjunction with the domestic and the parenting; a history of women artists have (had to) make this pretty clear in ways that a fleeting reference to Patti Smith's retreat into the suburbs to raise a family doesn't address.

I can't help wondering if what irks you about H Truths (and like other people have intimated, picking on it is a straw man for cheap potshots; the issue w/ Home Truths is style of discourse rather than content) is Peel's occupation of what might conventionally be thought of as a woman's role, picking through the detritus of the ordinary/extraordinary in family life (a version of the lady novelist, perhaps), his move from sibilant seducer of sixteen year olds to domestic partner, rather than what it might have to say about the state of culture more generally.

A couple of years a whole ad campaign for an online knowledge service called Questia was based on my cabaret show 'Electronics in the 18th Century'. But by the time it was stripped down to 30 second clips with the URL and the selling line, it was just some guy in a wig with a silly french accent. It had none of the gestalt shock that I put into my original cabaret, the 'what if' proposition about a parallel world where they had Pong games in the 18th century. Was I surprised to have all the interesting bits smoothed off my original concept? Was I fuck. It's the story of the majority of creative people working in capitalism.

Yeah, but my original point stands, you are still attempting as well as drawing money out, to enter the mainstream through the advertisements. It's clever and it's often done. Stereolab/Spiritualized/Lilys/Clash/New Order/etc. Do it. And do it alot. Just not as blatant as you are.

Prog — which was an anti-canonic cross-class space in the late 60s and early 70s — was aggressively de-working classed by punk, a younger-sibling-rival strand of anti-canonic cross-class bohemianism.

(very early prophet of where peel was always headed = julie burchill) (both now shill for difftly shrill versions of normalcy, of course)

1. I came to Peel in the late 80s when he was already domesticated. His show was the first place where I heard reggae, techno, experimental pop musics and any kind of African musics. Yes admittedly at the time I endured these while waiting for that next Weddoes session track but I'm still grateful. Crucially he also played all this stuff with constant asides about Flossie and William and The Pig. Doing this he was setting out an inspiring having-it-all style model to me - he can have the comforting intimacies of family life and still be collecting thousands of records and reaching across the airwaves to shape the tastes of geeks like me, hooray!

2. I want to have children so I can make up stories for them, red others, embellish still more. A huge huge part of the imaginative and artistic tradition, certainly in the West and no doubt elsewhere, is born out of 'normal life'/'family life'. Next to religion it's the biggest artistic motor going - you told stories to entertain the family; you learnt to play, or compose, music in a family setting. So perhaps Momus misunderstands the problem - not one of elites vs normals but a change in the idea of what 'family life' is, one which downplays the self-created family experience in favour of the shop- bought one.

3. I think people are underestimating the wish for individuality, or at least the wish to define one's own environment - it's a motive force for 'creatives' but also for 'normals', too. What Momus is really talking about isn't elitism so much as cliquism, the desire to find a bunch of mates who share similar interests and disinterests. Momus producing art which gets consumed mostly by other artists or wannabe-artists doesn't seem too dissimilar to Pete or Emma or me or John or Tim or Sarah producing jokes in the pub which get consumed by other jokers.

Urgh! Those lines make me shudder. I hope he didn't mean for them to sound the way they do to me. Apparently, this argument is about John Peel but that just made me imagine a row of pretty but moronic girls, knees spread, crying "Impregnate me because I could never hope to achieve anything else in life!". It seems hateful of the housewife, a male disdain for the drudgery, the "less important" role of raising children. Can mothers and fathers not produce some of the most beautiful pieces of art, even more beautiful because it deals with their children? I am thinking of Mahler's Kindertotenlieder and Schumann's Scenes from Childhood. Flemish art that depicted domestic life (specifically female roles such as laceworkers and spinners) or Caravaggio's fortune tellers and local peasants were both considered controversial because it deviated from the 'high art' of the typical classical, elevated heroic mode. Jesus, I don't know how old John Peel is but he must be getting up there. He can't be dealing with bouncing girls and perfumed sex gardens forever, can he? That would be incredibly depressing. Everyone else will eventually have to deal with liver spots/sagging breasts/wrinkled penises which will not impress the cute girl/boy out there unless we happen to be fabulously wealthy. By then, will perfumed sex gardens even matter? No, you'll be hoping that you have grandchildren to take care of, tell stories to, admire their potential. Well, that is what I will be hoping anyways. Oh I am letting this thread frustrate me, sorry!

'what things are' is quite open to debate, is not not? what things are depends on what context you are looking from.

'SOMETHING GOOD ON TELLY ALERT' thread: 1 post. Mmm Pies: 76.

Come on, admit it, you love it!

Oh but I think there are several who HAVE heard his music and consider that also.

Ethan, what the fuck.

lol home truths